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History of the Summer Science Program
The Summer Science Program began in 1959 at The Thacher School in Ojai, California.
Thacher's headmaster became convinced that the country's most promising high school students,
those most capable of careers in the intellectually-challenging physical sciences,
were not being adequately informed and inspired about those career options.
He believed that an intense summer program would challenge such students
beyond anything they had so far experienced, giving them a taste of "real science"
and inspiring them to seek a career in the sciences. He garnered assistance from
leading California colleges, including Caltech, Claremont Colleges, Stanford, and
UCLA. Financial support came from aerospace firm Hughes Aircraft.
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Caltech physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman gave seven
SSP guest lectures between 1960 and 1980. |
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That first summer, the students calculated the orbits of minor planets (asteroids) from their own observations, measurements, and calculations (which were then performed on electro-mechanical calculating machines). The results were submitted to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and were catalogued there. This research has been performed each summer since then.
SSP was held at The Thacher School for 41 years, 1959 through 1999.
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The Post-Thacher Years
In 1999, The Thacher School decided to dedicate its entire campus to a different, larger program. SSP could have simply ceased to exist at that time, but alumni decided that could not be allowed to happen. They rallied to create and fund a new nonprofit corporation, Summer Science Program, Inc., to take over operation of SSP as an independent program.
Beginning in 2000, the Summer Science Program has been held at Besant Hill School, located just across the Ojai Valley from The Thacher School. In 2003 a second campus opened at New Mexico Tech in Socorro.
The Summer Science Program is one of the oldest programs of its kind in the world, and the only one managed and largely funded by its own alumni.
For more details, see Wikipedia.
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This measuring engine was used by Edwin Hubble,
and donated to SSP By Mt. Wilson Observatory. |
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UCLA astronomer George Abell served as SSP Academic Director
for 12 years. The "Abell Clusters" of galaxies he discovered
are the largest known structures in the universe. Photo by Ken Nordhauser '76. |
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